A Beginner’s Guide to Cloud-Based Learning

Not all learning environments should be virtual. Offering students the best possible learning experience requires pedagogy that’s flexible, collaborative, inclusive, and meaningful. This means integrating technology that works around your ideas, bringing learning outcomes to the fore. As innovative teaching models that maintain this focus increase in popularity, educators are moving to the cloud for more access, less hassle, and better solutions.

The Benefits of Cloud

With more schools looking to learning management systems for best practice, the need for cloud is becoming greater. Cloud-based learning essentially eliminates the need for any storage device, saving every lesson, activity, and resource as you go, and more importantly, storing student activity as they learn. With unlimited access, students and teachers alike can sign in on any device, at any time, only to be met with an array of past resources, neatly shelved for ease of use. For any educator struggling with management and organization, the cloud provides the ultimate solution.

Yet, the benefits of cloud-based learning go far beyond saving time and hassle. Many systems are now offering in-depth insights into how students are progressing, using the data that’s collected as they learn. With these, educators receive a real-time view of where their students are, what they’re doing, and why they may be struggling or advancing further, revolutionizing the way we respond to student performance. Collaboration is another key element of many cloud-based systems that incorporate social media, making it as easy as possible to share, view, and interact with peers for learning purposes.

The Challenges of Cloud

While the benefits of cloud-based learning far outweigh the challenges, the general concerns centre around safety, alignment, and the best use of data. With the uncertainty of not knowing where your data is going, or how it’s being used, ensuring the security of your platform takes priority. Although several cloud-based systems are now readily available for educators to find resources and create lessons, alignment remains a key challenge with most failing to align to standards, age and grade level. Many systems also fail to make use of the data collected, depriving their users of key insights into how each student is progressing, and at what pace.

The Personalized Cloud

Adaptive systems are taking cloud-based learning to the next level. With secure platforms like Fishtree bringing personalized learning into the mix, educators can get the most out of their cloud, creating lessons, finding resources and assigning activities without worrying about saving or storing. Collaboration plays a key role in the system as students and educators are given the opportunity to share and interact with personalized resources, safely confined within the context of each lesson. Yet, perhaps what makes Fishtree stand out is its intelligent use of the data it collects. Constructing a Learning DNA for every student, the system recommends resources for students based on their interests, abilities, and needs. As they progress along personalized learning paths, educators are given a real-time view of progress and performance, ensuring the best use of every piece of data collected. With the added bonus of aligning all resources to state standards, grade and age level, adaptive systems like Fishtree are personalizing every experience to take teaching and learning out of the classroom, and into the cloud.

Like what you’ve read? Explore the benefits of cloud-based learning for yourself with the 21st century learning platform, taking teaching and learning to the next level.

About the author:

Lorna Keane specializes in language teaching and has taught in second and third-level institutions in several countries. She holds a B.A in languages and cultural studies and an M.A in French literature, theory and visual culture. Follow her on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.